Image processing apparatuses such as photocopiers, scanners, facsimile machines, and multifunction devices functioning as these devices, or image processing systems including such an image processing apparatus, have conventionally been arranged such that an image is read out from a document, the document image is subjected to various types of image processing, and the image processing result is produced as an output, e.g. printed onto a sheet or supplied to another image processing apparatus and/or an information processing apparatus.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-259633 (published on Sep. 22, 2000) discloses a multipurpose network translation system using a translation server and translation client devices each made up of a multipurpose information processing apparatus such as PC, the translation system being arranged such that the translation server stores a plurality of specialized dictionaries, and the translation client devices shares the translation server and the dictionaries stored therein.
Meanwhile, documents to be read by the image processing apparatus often include character-string images. With regard to these character-string images, user-friendliness of the image processing apparatus would improve if a result of processing such as a translation process described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-259633 can be outputted by the apparatus.
To apply the technique of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-259633 to the image processing system, character-string information in a document image read out from a document is extracted, and the extracted character-string information is subjected to the translation process performed by the translation server. Not being limited to the translation, explanatory information of technical words in the character-string information may be outputted.
However, to apply the technique of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-259633 to the image processing system, it is necessary to provide, in the server connected to the image processing apparatuses via a network, a processing section for subjecting the extracted character-string information to processing (e.g. translation process). On this account, each server (e.g. a server on a LAN) that is set beforehand as a target of access from the image processing apparatuses is required to have processing resources such as dictionaries of various languages and specialized fields, dictionaries of various technical terms, and a program for processing these dictionaries. Furthermore, to support a lot of languages and specialized fields, each server that is set beforehand as a target of access from the image processing apparatuses is required to have high-capacity storage means and the like, so that the processing resources are not efficiently utilized. In particular, it is very inefficient to store some types of processing resources, such as dictionary data and programs corresponding to languages and specialized fields not frequently used, in each server that is set beforehand as a target of access from the image processing apparatuses.